I'm chatting w/ my BF online while DP packs for a weekend with his GF and the MDC poly forum is hoppin'.... Hehehe... It's a happy poly evening!!

Ok Cupid is good. I've met a few poly mama friends on there. If you're on Tribe or Livejournal, there's poly family communities. Pagan gatherings are full of poly-folk. We used to do ren faire and we go to pagan gatherings. Most of our friends are that sort of geeky. There's also Meetup.com.

We started opening our marriage up via a completely sexual avenue. We were active in the local swingers community. What we quickly found was that we were more interested in developing deeper relationships rather than just one night stands. And we found that most of the ppl we gravitated towards were interested in the same thing.

We were part of one web-community for a couple of years but left it feeling like it was all about going out to party and get l&%d and that's not at all what we wanted. We tried some poly communities and didn't feel like we fit in. When we went back to the swingers community last year we found a much different dynamic among a nice group of folks. So, we remain active as a way to meet folks who are also interested in relationships as opposed to just sex.

Its an interesting sub-set of that community. We have often run across folks in the larger community who, because they have entered it for purely sexual reasons, have big issues with getting to know eachother more. Lots of jealousy issues. But most folks state quite clearly in their profiles what they want...and don't want. There are a couple of poly groups and our group of friends are mostly poly-minded.

I know that in many poly circles, the swinger lifestyle is very much looked down upon, and I can understand why. What we found was that we really didn't fit well into either group, but have had more luck meeting folks who we are compatible with in the poly sub-set of the swinger community.

We tend to just meet people. One of my dh's ex-gf (and one of my best friends) was met thru freecycle. We received an aquarium from her. And another of his ex's is someone I met thru my local knitting group.

We are pretty open about it and the curious / open minded tend to ask questions.

i have to say my thought has been that orientation is pretty much akin to the color of your underwear, nothing bad about discussing it but i never felt it had to be advertised to the world either. unless i am fairly confident that it's a "safe" topic, i don't go there. esp. for something like the weekly yoga class or the such. why risk creating discomfort when we have to be there every single week. sometime in life i heard something about bears don't poop where they catch their food kind of thing.

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Originally Posted by Indigo73

We are pretty open about it and the curious / open minded tend to ask questions.

i have to say my thought has been that orientation is pretty much akin to the color of your underwear, nothing bad about discussing it but i never felt it had to be advertised to the world either. unless i am fairly confident that it's a "safe" topic, i don't go there. esp. for something like the weekly yoga class or the such. why risk creating discomfort when we have to be there every single week. sometime in life i heard something about bears don't poop where they catch their food kind of thing.

I know what you mean. It's not like we have a billboard over the house stating poly folks live here. But most folks "know" we are weird and polyness never seems to phase them after watching me walk barefoot while knitting in 40 degree weather on a day I am wearing my pirate patch instead of my prosthesis. :

Definitely Tribe.net - it's kind of like myspace for freaks. And, um, I think I've said this before, but our circle of friends are mostly burners... meaning us freaks who go to Burning Man. And a lot of us are poly. Tribe.net is largely burners, too.

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Tribes is easier to use than myspace I think. About the same as Yahoo's 360. Maybe we can look at yours and give some tips?

Alright, alrighty, I FINALLY broke down and made an account at PMM again. There still isn't anyone around here, but I figured I might as well. And now I'm craving the beaded silver pendant I kept seeing advertised on their front page.

This is the first time I can honestly say that I read every message here before I posted!

Hi all I am Teresa. I live near Portland OR with my two girls. While I would not consider myself Poly, I am drawn to the idea of it. I am in the middle of a divorce from my husband of 12 years. While married though, we became involved in the swinging community here. I had a hard time being so involved with people I did not know well. There was one couple we were involved with off and on for a period of about 3 years but we were definitely not the only couple they were involved with.

Fast forward to now. I would like to meet some Poly folks mostly for the 'tribe' aspect if not for the more 'friendly' aspect down the road. I just think I need to surround myself with open-minded, kid friendly folks. Folks who don't judge and understand that sometimes it takes more than one person to fulfill someone's needs.

Does any of that make sense? Anyway, I wanted to thank everyone for their candidness here. It really helps to know that I am not alone in my struggles.

Hi Ladies, Just popping in to say I might just get to join you soon! I've been in a straight marriage for 8 years and my husband and I recently agreed that I would have the freedom to look for a girlfriend. It's a big change for our relationship but I'm excited about it.

Just fyi, someone recently copied some stuff written between 2 poly bi mamas on another AP site I go to and pasted it to a drama-stirring site and were being all kinds of catty and nasty and homophobic and stuff. I know the folks from the drama site frequent MDC as well so it's probably not a bad idea to be cautious.

Good luck! I am feeling a little down because my and DH's significant other couple has put in for a transfer back to TX. They are having a hard time down here finacially. I love them and want what's best for them, but I still secretly kind of feel like''what about me?'' KWIM?

I haven't read through everything here quite yet, as I was just directed to this thread after I posted something in the tribe forum. I am so excited to have found it, though. :-)

I (and my husband) are in a polyfidelitous relationship for, gosh, well, it's been almost 8 years since Anna and Jim moved in, although we've been together for longer than that. It just made since when Anna was pregnant with our son that "our" family and "their" family joined together, and 8 years and three MORE children later, we haven't looked back. We coparent, co-sleep, and, we are VERY joyfully co-breastfeeding our two youngest (they're about a month and a half apart).

As I put in my tribe post, my biggest problem is with my mil. While she was never "comfortable" with the idea of all of us living together as a family, she begrudgingly "dealt" with it. However, lately, she's just becoming downright rude and hostile toward us (the adults). Whenever I've taken the children to visit or she comes here (she lives about 20 minutes away), she won't even acknowledge my partners, is (according to the kids) telling the kids how "wrong" our lifestyle is, how it'll never work out, etc. It's really beginning to upset not only me (I could deal with me being upset), but the kids are getting upset as well. Jayse (7) told me Gram said I'm going to hell and that he'll never get to see me again! Why in the world would you tell a SEVEN year old that? I tried to say, "Well, Gram has different ideas about what's right and wrong, and sometimes Gram speaks before she thinks, but you know I would never leave you, and I'm pretty happy with how are family is, and I think what we're doing is right for all of us." But, really, I was flabbergasted and didn't know what else to say.

I don't want to keep the kids from their grandparents (and they're very attached to her...she sees them at least once a week, generally), but, at this point, it almost seems cruel to let them see her if she's filling their heads with this stuff. Thoughts? Ideas?

I can only speak for myself, but if it were me, I would tell her that if you ever heard any comments like that again, especialy said to the kids, she could forget about seeing them. I understand attachment, but IMO, telling kids that Mama is going to hell is emotional abuse.:

apparently the only place in new england with anything interesting is boston and i cant get there at-will

otherwise seattle and california seem overrun with open-minded alternatives of all flavors LOLL i have a plan to chop off some states in the middle and sell them back to france or somethign so new england isnt so far from seattle & cali. you'd think i lived in a shack on the side of an unpopulated mountain with all the social issues around here!!! crikeys

Well, it's not like you can go out and find polyfolk just hanging out all in one place, waiting to hook up

You find compatible people by meeting people and talking to them. There are a LOT of people out there who have a poly mindset, but have no clue that it is something that has a name or is actually *done*. And they might not ever know, if you don't say something to them when they ask you about your family.

Kate - wow, how rotten to have to deal with that! Especially after 8 years of proving that what you have really does work.....
I *do* think a warning is in order for her. I mean honestly, would she really choose not seeing her grandchildren over keeping her thoughts to herself? She may see what she's doing as "saving" your children, but really she's doing a lot of damage by making comments like that to one so young.

Thankfully, though I know our families don't "approve", they just pretend nothing at all is different about our family. I think they've just realized how much happier we all are with our arrangement, and are happy for us.

Maybe just saying something (or writing a letter saying) "I know you don't approve of how we live, and even if you *wanted* to approve, you couldn't because our lifestyle goes against your religious beliefs. However, we are your family, and if you want to remain close to your grandchildren, you're going to need to temper your comments. If I hear anything else from my kids about us going to hell or the like, you will no longer be able to spend time with them. They do not need such emotional manipulation from a person they love so dearly."